Boardman J., Hammond N.G. L. The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC
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SOME PROBLEMS OF CHRONOLOGY 325
supremacy of Argos in the Peloponnese, his most infamous act was the
ousting of the Eleans and the installing of the Pisatans to conduct the
Olympic festival, an event no doubt appended to the Victor List or
recorded separately at Olympia. Strabo tells us that the Eleans were in
charge from the ist to the 26th Olympiad, i.e. from 776 to 676, and
that a Pisatan period came when the Pisatans recovered control of their
own territory; and Africanus, who used the Olympic lists, gave the 28th
Olympiad as a Pisatan one, i.e. 668. Pausanias reported that the Pisatans
and Pheidon conducted the games in the 8th Olympiad, which in view
of what Strabo and Africanus say is likely to be a textual error or a
factual error for the 28th Olympiad. That the festival records transmitted
such information is clear from the reporting of a second judge being
appointed in the 50th Olympiad, i.e. in 580.
12
Another event which
Pausanias dated by the citation not only of an Olympiad with an
Athenian victor but also of
an
eponymous magistrate at Athens was the
battle of Hysiae in 669/8, in which Argos defeated Sparta decisively;
we do not know where the event was recorded, whether at Olympia,
Athens or elsewhere, but such
a
victory was an indispensable preliminary
to Pheidon's intervention at Olympia.
13
So far so clear, but some stories that may refer to Pheidon have
chronological implications which are at variance with these dates. Thus
Herodotus gave a hilarious account of a house-party at Sicyon for the
suitors of Cleisthenes' daughter, which would suggest that Cleisthenes
and Pheidon were contemporary in the early sixth century. At the other
extreme, in a romantic story about one Actaeon of Corinth, Pheidon
was represented as a contemporary of the founder of Syracuse, who
nourished c. 735. Neither story offers a serious challenge to the dates
drawn from the Olympic records. Indeed another version of the second
story with less sensational colouring placed Pheidon's threat to Corinth
just before the fall of the Bacchiad rulers of Corinth, an event normally
dated
c.
65
7.
14
A different kind of challenge was made by Ephorus and
Theopompus, fourth-century historians, who used genealogies for
academic purposes in order each to establish his hypothetical system
of chronology: Ephorus making him a tenth-generation descendant of
Temenus, and so of mid-eighth century date, and Theopompus
a
seventh-generation descendant and so of ninth century date. Their
calculations and their differences are not worth pursuing
in
this
context.
15
The fact is that Pheidon flourished c. 670-660 B.C., and we
owe our knowledge of that fact to the records of the Olympic festival.
12
Strabo 355; Africanus in Euseb. Chron. 1.196; Paus. vi. 22.2 and v. 9.4.
13
Paus. 11. 24.7; and F 2, 90.
14
Hdt. vi. 127; Plut. Mor. 772c; Schol. Ap. Rhod. iv. 1212; E 182.
15
FCrH 70 (Ephorus)
F
115; FGrH 115 (Theopompus) F 393; E 151,
5 5
ff-
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326 4
2
-
THE
PELOPONNESE
II.
THE PURSUIT OF POWER BY THE DORIAN STATES,
C. 750-650 B.C.
1.
Constitutional
modifications
at
Sparta
The men
of
Aegium are said
to
have asked Apollo
of
Delphi who
were better than they, and
to
have received the answer:
16
Best is Pelasgic Argos of all soils, best are the horses of Thrace, the women
of Sparta, the men who drink the water of fair Arethusa, but better still than
these are those who dwell
between
Tiryns and
Arcadia
rich
in
flocks,
the
Argives
of
the
linen corslet, pricks of
war.
But you, men of Aegium, are neither third,
nor fourth, nor twelfth, nor in account nor reckoning.
Question and answer epitomize the competitive spirit
of
the city-
states.
They were as whole-hearted in the race for power
as
their athletes
were in pursuit of the olive-wreath prize at the Olympic games. In the
Peloponnese Argos claimed to be the most martial not only in the eighth
century to which this answer may be dated,
17
but also by tradition from
the time
of
the Dorian invasion.
In
the first half
of
the eighth century
her claim was justified by the facts; for she seems to have held Argolis,
Epidauria, Thyreatis, Cynuria and Cythera
at
the time when she sent
an expeditionary force
to
help
the
'Achaeans'
of
Helos against
the
Dorians of Sparta in the reign of
Alcamenes,
father of Polydorus (Paus.
in. 2.7 and 20.6-7).
To
break the divinely-sanctioned ties
of
kinship
between Dorian and Dorian and
to
help 'Achaeans' against Dorians
was
a
ruthless action, prompted by considerations of political expediency
which seemed convincing at the time; for, if Argos could confine Sparta
to the inland plain
of
the Eurotas valley, she had every hope
of
being
unchallenged as the leading power
in
the Peloponnese.
In the mid-eighth century Argos had a
fleet
of warships which carried
sail
but were rowed into battle by single banks of oarsmen. The keel-beam
of the low hull was extended in the bows so as to form a thin ram, and
the side-decks served
as a
platform
for
marines. Merchantmen were
broad-beamed sailing-ships with
a
curved hull and a deep draught by
comparison; in a calm sea they were at the mercy of
the
warship. Sparta,
on the other hand, had no ships. Thus the Argives were able to transport
troops
to
Helos unopposed. The small towns
of
non-Dorian peoples
at this time apparently had citadels defended by mud-brick walls, such
as have been found
at
Halieis, and these were often held with success,
as there were no siege-engines.
16
A
5
o,
11
1.
17
Men
of
Arethusa are those
of
Chalcis
in
Euboea, the pioneer state
in
colonizing the west,
and the linen corslet preceded the bronze armour
of
the hoplite. Parke would date this
to the
later seventh century.
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PURSUIT OF POWER BY THE DORIAN STATES 327
Warfare was conducted normally in the open country. The best-
equipped warriors, wearing defensive armour, fought each other at close
quarters with spear and sword, but the majority of men with nothing
more than a linen or leather jerkin for protection fought from a distance
with javelins and slings and stones. Cavalrymen had a great advantage
over both kinds of infantrymen, heavy-armed and light-armed as they
are called, but there were very few cavalrymen in the Peloponnese.
Under such conditions a war might soon degenerate into sporadic
guerrilla righting, for which the mountainous terrain was suitable, and
become very protracted. But it was a destructive form of warfare in that
the open country was devastated and the entire population was at risk.
When a man fell in battle, he was killed and stripped, and when a town
fell,
its population was massacred, enslaved or evicted. Only religious
prohibitions were respected: the dead were not mutilated or left un-
buried, worshippers and suppliants in the precincts of the gods were
inviolate, and temples of the gods were not razed as the other buildings
of a captured town were. In such life-and-death struggles valour was
at its highest premium. In the words of the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus: 'To
die,
falling in the front line, a brave man fighting for his fatherland, is
honourable; but to leave one's city and its rich fields and live as a beggar
is the depth of misery' (6.1-4).
When the Spartans captured Helos, they razed it to the ground and
enslaved the inhabitants; but they preserved the worship of Kore,
daughter of Demeter, which had been practised by the Achaeans.
Confident in their conquest of Laconia, the Spartans invaded the
Argolid in the reign of Nicander, father of Theopompus, gained the
support of Asine and ravaged the enemy land. But later, when the king
of Argos marched against Asine on the Argolic coast and laid siege to
its defences, Sparta did not intervene. In the end the Asinaeans
—
predominantly not Dorians but Dryopes
—
escaped in their ships and
were given sanctuary in Laconia. Their city was razed to the ground,
except that the temple of Apollo was left standing (Paus.
11.
36.4—5 and
in. 7.4). Thus the seeds were sown of a bitter hatred between Argos
and Sparta which became ineradicable.
The Spartans turned next against the Dorians of Messenia. There,
as we argued in CAH
in.1
2
,
731,
the Dorians held only the inland plains
and the eastern hills in the eighth century, and Dorian 'Messene' of
which Tyrtaeus wrote was probably the ' middle-land' surrounding the
plain of Stenyclarus, which, like the plain of Dorian Sparta, looked
inland rather than towards the sea. The border between the Dorians
of Messene and the Dorians of Sparta was formed not by the spine
of Taygetus, as later in the urban civilization of the Hellenistic period,
but by the allocation of winter and summer pastures. Thus the Dorians
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328 4
2
- THE PELOPONNESE
of Messene held the inland plains and mountains, and the Dorians of
Laconia held the whole promontory of Taenarum, including at its base
Dentheliates, the district in the north-east angle of the Messenian Gulf
in which Laconian settlements were said
to
have been made by King
Teleclus.
The
Dorians
of
Messene
and
Laconia shared
a
festival
attended only by Dorians at
a
shrine of Artemis Limnatis
in
northern
Dentheliates very close to the frontier
of
Messene. The other parts of
what was later called Messenia were still occupied
by
'Achaeans'
in
the sense
of
pre-Dorian peoples. Corone
on
the western shore
of
the
Messenian
Gulf,
for example, had an Olympic victor in 732 B.C., when
the Dorians were locked in combat.
When the Spartans were fighting their way to the Laconian coast, the
Dorians of Messene gained access to the coast, probably in the rich plain
at the head of the
Gulf;
for a contemporary poet, Eumelus of Corinth,
composed a processional hymn for' the Messenians' who took offerings
to Apollo of Delos. War between the two groups of Dorians was said
to be justified as
a
means of punishing acts
of
sacrilege on both sides
which occurred within the precinct
of
Artemis Limnatis, such as the
raping
of
Spartan girls
by
Messenians and plots
by
Spartans
to
kill
Messenians there. That these alleged acts had occurred
a
generation
before
the
outbreak
of
war was immaterial;
for
the memory
of
the
goddess
was
long
and the
contestants hoped
to win her
support.
Whatever the actual bone
of
contention
at
the time, some Dorians
of
Messene favoured a peaceful settlement; they were banished and found
a new home
in
Rhegium (see above, p. 109).
When the war was on, some Spartans questioned the rightness
of
attacking 'their brothers', i.e. fellow Dorians; but the desire
of
the
majority was expressed in an answer attributed to the king Polydorus,
'
we
march against a land that is not divided into lots' (Plut. Mor.
231
D).
It was
a
war
of
bitter fighting, entirely on Messenian soil and mainly
of
a
guerrilla character.
18
In
the twentieth year the last fighters
for
freedom fled from the great mountains of
Ithome,
looking back for the
last time
at
the rich fields of the Stenyclarus plain, and the victors, led
by their king Theopompus, occupied 'Messene spacious for dancing'
(Tyrtaeus frs. 2 and 4), reduced the survivors
to
serfdom as 'Helots',
and divided up the good land into lots for some 3,000 Spartiates (Plut.
Lye. 8). The Helots were compelled to swear an oath not to revolt from
their owner, the Spartan state, the object being that if Helots broke their
oath they could
not
obtain religious sanctuary;
to
deliver half their
produce
to
Sparta; and themselves and their wives
to
attend
in
black
18
The main source
is
Tyrtaeus. The detailed account
in
Paus. rv
is
worthless, being derived
from
a
fictional fourth-century history (see
E
174);
for
some points
of
value
in
Paus. and Strabo
see
E
166, 15
ff,
7; ff.
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PURSUIT OF POWER BY THE DORIAN STATES 329
clothing and with keening the funerals
of
Lacedaemonian kings and
senior officials (Tyrt.
fr. 5; cf.
Paus. iv. 14.4—5). Men, women and
children lived in destitution on the land they were forced to cultivate,
'suffering like donkeys under great burdens',
as
Tyrtaeus said. But
Tyrtaeus had less sympathy
for
them than Randolph had
for the
Tsakones (above, p. 699).
The Spartan soldiers were said to have taken an oath early in the war
not to leave the field until they destroyed Messene or were destroyed
themselves (Strabo 279), and this oath was connected with the tradition
that men too young to have taken the oath were sent later to cohabit
with Spartan girls and beget children. The sons of these unions, called
Partheniae, took part in the founding of Sparta's colony, Taras, in Italy,
probably in the last decade of the eighth century.
19
Another effect of
the long war was that the Apella did not represent the full body of
citizens and that tensions arose between the Gerousia and an unrepre-
sentative Apella (for these bodies see CAH111.1
2
, 741). In consequence
the kings Theopompus and Polydorus, son of the Alcamenes in whose
reign the war started, brought from Apollo's shrine at Delphi a special
injunction (called by modern scholars 'the Rider to the Rhetra'): 'but
if the people declare crookedly, the Elders and Archagetae shall
be
adjourners'. The Gerousia proposed to append this injunction to the
famous Rhetra (see CAH in.i
2
, 740), and their proposal was approved
by the Apella. The sense of the thus complete document was paraphrased
by Tyrtaeus in the mid-seventh century as follows:
Lord Apollo, golden-haired master of the silver bow, fulfilling his purposes
from afar, has thus responded from his wealthy shrine. '
Let
the beginning of
counsel be with the kings, honoured by the gods, and the elders of revered
age;
and then let the citizens answering straightly to the proposals say what
is fair and do what is right altogether, and no longer give <crooked> counsel
to this city. And in the majority of the commons let victory and supremacy
reside.' So Apollo declared concerning them in the interest of the city.
20
This was
not the
last attempt
in
history
to put
together
two
irreconcilable political statements in one document. As a loyalist poet,
Tyrtaeus underplayed the discrepancy between the original Rhetra
which gave the right of discussion and decision to the commons and
the Rider which enabled
the
Gerousia
to
curtail discussion
and
withdraw the right of decision by pronouncing an adjournment;
for
adjournment was evidently
a
euphemism
for
dismissal, when
the
Apella's view threatened to be a' crooked' one. Thereafter the proposal
became law
—
but only
if
the Gerousia was unanimous in making the
•* Strabo 278, Arist. Pol. I3o6b3o, Polyaen. 11. 14.2.
20
The text is doubtful and the meaning disputed. See E 160, 54-62; for other views E 172,
<)%{,
with bibliography.
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330 4
2
- THE PELOPONNESE
proposal and was prepared to go ahead despite popular opposition. Such
a strengthening
of
an inner body, whether Council, Senate or Cabinet,
is not unusual in the crisis of war;
at
Sparta
it
arose in such a crisis but
became permanent, an indication in itself that Sparta was permanently
in
a
state of preparedness for war. Occasions did occur later when the
Gerousia committed the state to a policy without consulting the Apella,
in the confidence that its members would be unanimous when the time
came
to
inform the people. But these were exceptions.
In
general the
tensions between king and king, or kings and elders, or among the elders
ensured that the Gerousia was not unanimous, and then there was full
discussion and the decision was made by the Apella.
Another constitutional change was attributed to King Theopompus
by Aristotle, who was illustrating his theory that monarchy lasts longest
when its powers are restricted.' Thus the Lacedaemonian monarchy has
persisted because from the beginning it was divided into two parts and
it was modified again by Theopompus in various ways and in particular
by setting the ephors over it'
(Pol.
i
3^25). Originally concerned with
the social system,
the
agoge
(see
CAM
III.I
2
,
742),
the
ephors rose
to some constitutional importance when the senior ephor became the
eponymous official
of
the year
in
754, perhaps
in
connexion with
the
oaths made
at the
beginning
of
the year
and
renewed each month
between
the
kings
and the
ephors:
the
kings swearing
to
rule
in
accordance with the laws of the state, and the ephors swearing on behalf
of the state
to
preserve the monarchy intact
as
long
as
the king kept
his oath ([Xen.] Lac. Pol. 15.7). The powers conferred
on
the ephors
vis-a-vis
the kings during the First Messenian War were probably that
two ephors thenceforth accompanied
the
kings
on a
campaign
as
observers and as disciplinary officers (the kings, as in Macedon, having
had absolute power of punishment during a campaign); that the ephors
took over from the kings certain judicial powers in civil cases; and that
the ephors received powers
of
summary arrest, and could suspend
a
magistrate, including
a
king, from his office until
he
was tried. Their
status in relation
to
the kings was indicated by the fact that at the entry
of the kings
on a
ceremonial occasion everyone stood
up
except
the
ephors, who remained seated
on
their official chairs.
The reforms which arose from
the
circumstances
of the
First
Messenian War brought the Spartan constitution to its classical form.
21
It is now appropriate to describe it. The powers
of
the two 'Kings
of
the Lacedaemonians' were indivisible.
In
war they made sacrifice first
at Sparta
to
Zeus
the
Leader
and to his
twin sons,
the
Dioscuri
or
Tyndaridae, and then at the frontier to Zeus and Athena; they consulted
the omens, and these had to be favourable before they proceeded across
21
Chief sources are Hdt. vi. 56-9; [Xen.] Lac. Pol.; Arist.
Pol.
passim
and frs.
536-9.
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PURSUIT OF POWER BY THE DORIAN STATES
3 3
I
the frontier or went into battle; and they exercised equal and total
powers of command, any Lacedaemonian who refused to obey being
laid under a curse. They rode at the head of the army, fought in person
and were accompanied by the statues of the Tyndaridae. During a
campaign the kings and their staff were maintained at the state's expense.
At home the kings conducted state sacrifices, kept (with the Pythii) the
archive of oracular responses, and took the oath first in making treaties.
In justice their powers were restricted progressively, until they judged
only cases of inheritance and adoption and the highway code. In policy-
making they had no more say in theory than their fellow-members
of the Gerousia, but in practice a king of powerful personality might
wield great influence.
As intermediaries with the gods and as heads of
state,
the kings were
treated with ceremonial respect, but their way of life was far from
extravagant. Their state residence was not a palace but a tent, shared
with the Pythii, and they received from the state a double portion of
food in their tent, so that they could each entertain a state guest. Their
own means were modest; they each had a pool of water beside their
house, they kept part of the sacrificial victims and they received a pigling
from every litter as a royal prerogative. They owned parcels of land in
some of the Perioecic states. On the whole it was a democratic form
of constitutional monarchy. But its prestige was apparent when a king
died; then'men and women from the families of Spartiates, Periceci and
Helots were required to attend the funeral, and state business was
suspended for ten days of full mourning.
The Gerousia, its life-members being twenty-eight elders and the two
kings under the title of
archagetae,
had the monopoly in the initiation
of policy, and the major say in the direction of policy. It tried the most
important cases, including those of homicide. As a body the Gerousia
was not answerable for its political and judicial decisions. The kings
might be of any age, but the elders were elected at the age of sixty or
more by the Apella, whenever a vacancy arose. Election was not only
the highest honour but also the highest responsibility to which a
Spartiate could aspire. Modern constitutions provide no parallel, and
even democratically elected life-peers sitting alone in an effective House
of Lords would be powerless in comparison. That the elders were
supporters of
the
traditional establishment was inevitable in view of the
social system and the nature of the Spartiate electorate; and the credit,
if it is a matter of credit, for the consistent direction of Spartan policy
must go primarily to them. Yet there is truth in Aristotle's criticism
of the gerontocracy of Sparta, that there is an old age of the mind as
well as of the body.
The five Ephors, elected annually by the Apella from Spartiates aged
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332 4
2
- THE PELOPONNESE
between thirty and sixty, oversaw most of the daily life of the citizens.
As controllers of the
agoge
they demanded obedience and imposed
punishments and fines; on entering office they told the Spartiates to
'shave the moustache and obey the laws'; and they had powers of
summary arrest. They were in charge of internal security; they declared
war annually on the Helots, and they acted on suspicion of a plot, for
instance in the case of the Partheniae who were suspected of collabo-
rating with the Helots. As we have seen, they could suspend a
magistrate or a king; they acted as public prosecutors against a king,
and as judges in civil cases. In the event of war they decided which
age-groups should be called up; they appointed three men who chose
300 men in their prime to serve as the royal bodyguard; and two of
them accompanied the kings in the field, where they had disciplinary
powers over the troops. As representatives of the people, they had some
religious duties. One of
these
was to watch the sky on a clear moonless
night, once in every nine years, and if they saw a shooting star to
suspend the kings as being out of favour with the gods and to reinstate
them only if and when the god of Delphi or Olympia expressed
willingness. In later centuries the ephors added greatly to their powers,
even summoning the Gerousia and presiding over the Apella.
'Spartiates', men over thirty who had passed through the
agoge
and
been elected to a mess (see CAH m.i
2
, 741), were the only members
of the Apella. They elected all
22
their leaders - kings, elders, ephors,
minor magistrates and military commanders under the kings' general
command; they voted by acclamation, the shouts being judged by
electoral officers in a separate room. They heard, discussed and voted
for or against proposals submitted by the Gerousia; and even when their
will was frustrated by the Gerousia, their opinion was still a check on
the Gerousia. Having been trained from childhood to respect authority,
living in social units where age was respected, and being in effect
professional soldiers, the great majority of them did not resent the
authority of their leaders and the predominance of the Gerousia. At the
same time they were on an equality with one another in education,
economic status and obligation to serve the state, and that is why they
were called 'Equals'
(Homoioi).
In the constitutional theory of ancient Greece the citizen body alone
was taken into account, so that an extreme democracy could be said to
exist in a society with a large non-citizen basis. A particular feature of
the Spartan state was noted by Aristotle {Pol. 127^2): 'the whole
system of the laws is directed towards-one-part of excellence, military
22
Arist. Pol. 1294b; cf. PI. Leg. 712d. Those elected for the ephorate were probably scrutinized
by the Gerousia or/and by their predecessors in office; this would explain Aristotle's remark, that
the people played only a part in electing ephors
(ibid.
31-2). Contra,
Historia
29 (1980)
)%<)(.
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PURSUIT OF POWER BY THE DORIAN STATES 333
valour, which is of service for conquest'. Military valour, of course,
included other qualities of value to
a
political society - a sense of honour
and of obligation, discipline and unity - and it did not exclude the
cultural activities for which early Sparta was particularly famous, music,
dancing and poetry. The beauty and the comparative freedom of
Spartan girls and women were proverbial, and although Spartiates
themselves did not engage in crafts and trades the Laconian pottery
of the seventh and sixth centuries was one of the finest in the Pelo-
ponnese. Aristotle classified the Spartan constitution as a mixed con-
stitution, rightly; for it included full monarchy in military command,
full oligarchy in decision-making and in judging capital charges, and
full democracy in the basic equalities of citizen life and property. It is
true that he had different criteria from us in some respects; for example,
to him the direct election to all offices by the people was an oligarchic
feature (democracy using the lot), and those thus elected and wielding
power were an aristocracy (of merit in the eyes of the electors, not of
course of birth). If we consider its administrative activity, Sparta had
an oligarchic government. Thus Plutarch interpreted the establishment
of the ephorat^in the constitution first as a 'curb on the oligarchy' and
second as being in fact not a relaxation but rather a strengthening of
the regime; for 'it only appeared to be a popular feature and in fact
intensified the aristokratia' (Lye. 29
fin.).
i3
The Spartan state contained also the underprivileged: the ' Inferiors'
who had failed to qualify as citizens in the
agoge
or later, and the Helots
or agricultural work-force. The kings of the Lacedaemonians com-
manded the conscripted forces of the Periceci, who were bound by
the foreign policy of Sparta and paid produce from royal estates in their
territory but otherwise managed their own affairs. The Perioeci engaged
in crafts and trade as well as in farming. The number of Helots was
more than doubled by the annexation of 'Messene', and that of the
Periceci increased as the shores of the whole Messenian Gulf came
into Sparta's sphere of power. Thus the economic strength and the
military potential of the Lacedaemonians were greatly augmented by
this acquisition of 'spear-won land'.
Excavation has added only
a
little to the picture.
24
At Mila near Malthi
in the north of
the
inland plain a cult with dedications of figurines came
to an end c. 725, evidently with the subjugation or flight of the local
people. On the other hand there was continuity from Geometric to
Classical times in a large tomb at Karpophora. And on the west coast
by Pylus burials of the traditional kind were made in Mycenaean
23
The Greek meanings have to be kept in mind: oligarchy being rule by the few, aristocracy
rule by the best, and democracy rule by the people; in all cases direct rule is meant.
" E 170; E 165; BCH 1961, 697; see CAH m.i«,
7281".
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534 42' THE PELOPONNESE
chamber-tombs and tholos-tombs in the Late Geometric period. There
are signs of growing prosperity at Sparta in the erection of the first stone
buildings
in
the precinct
of
Artemis Orthia
at
Limnae c. 725 and of a
shrine soon afterwards to Menelaus and Helen
at
Therapne.
The poverty of what has been revealed by excavation should remind
us that the Spartiates living in their messes
at
Sparta and their families
living in the five obes of the middle valley of the Eurotas had the very
simplest standard
of
life. They had
no
walls
of
defence and
no
sub-
stantial establishments. They relied on their physique and their weapons
to hold the Helots
to
their labours and
to
keep their neighbours
at a
distance.
In
relation
to the
Periceci
and the
Helots
the
Spartiates
-
perhaps 6,000 adult males
c.
700
B.C.
—
were far from numerous.
It
was
essential for the future of Sparta to maintain the birth-rate of its citizens,
and practices designed
for
this purpose, such
as
polyandry
and
cohabitation of an old man's young wife with a man in his prime, were
accepted
in a
society which was primitive
in
many ways and put
the
interest of family and state before the susceptibilities of the individual.
25
2.
The other Peloponnesian states
In the north
of
the Peloponnese Corinth and Megara were
at
logger-
heads.
Corinth seized the Heraea (now Perachora) and built
a
temple
to Hera Limenia c. 740, and sometime later advanced into the central
plain and subjugated the Megarians. One condition imposed upon the
vanquished was that they must send young men and women to attend
the funeral
and
join
in the
mourning
at the
death
of
one
of the
Corinthian ruling clan,
the
Bacchiadae;
a
similar condition
to
that
imposed by the Spartans on the Messenians. But the Megarians revolted
successfully, led by an Olympic victor of
720,
Orsippus, whose epitaph
included these words: 'when the enemy were cutting
off
much land,
he freed the farthest frontier in his country's cause'. But Corinth proved
the stronger. By 700 she held the Heraea and the Piraea, including Oenoe
on the Corinthian Gulf and Crommyon
on
the Saronic Gulf (Strabo
380),
and she built a temple to Poseidon of the Isthmus in thanksgiving.
The gain to Corinth was very great. By advancing her northern frontier
she secured her grip on the neck of the Isthmus, which had
a
harbour
on either Gulf and
a
short span
for
portage; and her harbour by the
temple of Hera Limenia was sheltered from the northerly and westerly
winds
to
which Lechaeum was exposed. Her new territory provided
timber, pasture and slopes
for
arboriculture. The loss
to
Megara was
correspondingly severe, especially as the raising of sheep and the making
of woollen goods were sources
of
her prosperity.
26
25
See
E
151,
2i
4
ff.
28
See
E
216 and
O.
Broneer
in
Hesp.
7
(1938)
27.
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